Who leaks music tracks?

Love the column and podcast! I was bouncing around YouTube earlier, and I came across several leaked tracks supposedly from a soon-to-be-released album. How and why exactly do songs get leaked? Was this done on purpose as a means to drum up publicity, or is some label underling in a lot of trouble?
—Christopher, Lake Worth, Florida

The B!tch Replies:  You mean by what stygian channel did we first learn that Heidi Montag wants a "boss type" to control her because she got what you need, need, need? According to reports, Montag, along with her nasty cherub Spencer Pratt, never wanted Ryan Seacrest to leak Montag's "Body Language" single on his KIIS-FM show back in August. And they certainly didn't want Pratt's rap to be revealed to the masses like that.

They were furious, they said! Betrayed! Outraged! And besides, that song was just a joke, anyway!

But if that's so, how come Seacrest, when debuting the track, said, "They told us it was coming; they got it to us first," and "She's listening, she wants your feedback"? And wait a sec—don't I remember Pratt hinting to InTouch that he might leak Heidi's single on Seacrest's show?

Whoops. As Spencer himself might say, he and Heidi be busted, y'all. Pratt later blamed Montag's label for the leak, playing the wrong song...or something, but either way, the whole thing smacks of a ham-handed bid for yet more publicity.

Sometimes leaks come from people who work directly on a song—a puckish remixer or some other worker bee out for revenge. But increasingly, I'm told, leaks are deliberate, marketer-driven ploys aimed at building hype. A PR person or manager slips a copy to a deejay or uploads a track onto Limewire or YouTube to, say, gauge whether it should be the first single to be released.

And then the artists themselves deny, deny, deny—which, in turn, generates more headlines.

"A leak builds buzz for the album," says Arie Deutsch of the label Vox Music Group, which is releasing a new project by Ky-Mani Marley, Bob Marley's son, this week.

"If it starts doing well on these sites, then there is known to be a marketplace for this music," says Deutsch, who, I should say, has not allowed any leaks of Marley's album.

Sometimes the artists themselves are behind the leaks. Back in January, Britney Spears was seen by paparazzi driving around Santa Monica blaring what sounded like tunes from her upcoming album.

"Did Britney Spears leak her new tunes?" MSNBC speculated. More importantly: Britney was able to drive and listen to music at the same time?

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